Invisible Machinery
by altschmerz
Summary: Patrick Jane doesn't know what's stranger - the way they've been touching him since his sight was compromised or the fact that he thinks he's going to miss it when it stops. (Jane loses his sight, the team gets protective, and Jane has a little trouble processing this.) (gen, tag to s1e16 bloodshot, team as family touch-starved jane)


"how long do you think it's gonna take for me to write fic for this show" i ask my best friend, and apparently the answer is 16 episodes.

this is, despite basically being an entire fic focused on touch and feelings about being touched, completely gen, though if you wanna see other things here, i certainly can't stop you!

drop me a line if you liked it. i don't think i'm quite done with this show yet, i think i'll be back.

* * *

The half-life of Patrick's stay in the hospital isn't quite that of an over the counter pain medication, hardly any time at all passing before the stifling cacophony of hospital input drives his nerves over the edge. Sorting through the sounds, the smells - intercom, antiseptic, heart monitor, footsteps, air conditioning turning on, faintly under all of it, death… He can't take it very long at all, and he's barely ashamed of the behavior it takes to get him out of there.

Officer Powell is kind enough to drive him home, escort him back into CBI headquarters. The man's uniform is starched and stiff under Patrick's hand, and he walks with latent anxiety in his quick steps, stupidly panicked at the thought of what will happen if his palm slips from the man's shoulder and he's left alone. He feels childish, like he's clutching the hand of an adult at the grocery store, stricken at the idea of being left behind. Except there's no reassuring hand squeezing his back, no reciprocation of his searching hold. Just a policeman's uniform, moving constantly away from him, though he knows in his rational, adult brain that this is only what he's asked Powell to do.

From the moment Patrick first made the discovery that he couldn't see to the moment the doctor came in to explain what, exactly, was going on in his head, Lisbon hadn't let go of him for a second. The world felt like it was spinning out of control, like he was going to get lost and never make it back, when he'd stood up in that parking lot and opened his eyes to complete darkness, and then he'd felt it. Lisbon's hand closed over his forearm and grounded him, pulled him back to where he was and pinned him there. She rode with him in the ambulance, fingers tight around his wrist while the paramedics tried to get him to answer irrelevant, frustrating questions. And then in the hospital itself, while he laid there in that bed, still she'd been there.

Growing shocky and coming down off his adrenaline high, Patrick had felt the temperature of the room drop by degrees, Lisbon's hand the only source of warmth. He's sure, reflecting on it now, that she had noticed him shaking, shivering in his hospital-issue gown, if the way she had shifted beside him is any indication. He'd heard her move in the faint rustle of fabric, and then her other hand landed on his upper arm, rubbing it briskly. Without her grip, Lisbon's steady hold on him, Patrick had felt like he might've faded completely into the immediate aftermath of the explosion.

The difference between the way Lisbon had touched him in the hospital, and Powell's constantly shifting shoulder, is stark and leaves Patrick feeling cold again. And then even Powell is gone, and the room is empty around him, except for sounds, smells. Coffee, Van Pelt's phone, Lisbon's shoes coming towards him too fast for her to be anything but extremely displeased with him. Patrick can't really bring himself to care - he's out of that hospital, and she can be as mad at him about it as she wants, he still won't regret it.

"What was I supposed to do, just sit there and listen to television?" he asks, instead of telling her that he's pretty sure he'd have lost his mind if he'd had to stay in that hostile, unfamiliar place for ten more chaotic minutes. It's amazing, how lost a person can feel, laying stationary in a bed.

The office feels familiar but unsettlingly distant around him. The interrupted interrogation helps, nothing like getting back into routine to make a person feel like their world is still affixed to its axis, and Lisbon even lets him come along to interview the dead man's wife. She touches him again in the house, keeps him from running into the fridge or a wall with a hand on his sleeve, an arm around his back. It almost makes Patrick want to run himself towards things on purpose, if it means she'll keep touching him like this, except that sounds… weird to even think, so he swishes his skinny hospital-issue cane around and does his best on his own.

Except Lisbon is a good person, who - god help her - feels responsible for him, and so she keeps touching him, guiding him towards the car, patting him absently on the shoulder before starting the engine, and Patrick keeps feeling oddly warmed by it. It's a little like pins and needles, like the minutes after you step out of the ocean on a windy afternoon and your body remembers how to feel heat again. He can't remember the last time someone had touched him like this (maybe for the best, memory isn't a friend of his) and it's a nicer feeling than he wants to dwell on.

As it turns out, it isn't just Lisbon, either.

Back in the office, Patrick heads for his couch. This whole not-able-to-see thing has him feeling terribly unmoored, and if there's one place he always feels steady, it's there, so that's where he goes. It means navigating through the square of desks first, though, and that proves a little trickier than he'd banked on. Lisbon catches him by the hand when he almost stumbles. He can tell it's her because of the cinnamon, which he's sussed to be her car's air freshener, clinging to her clothes after she's left the vehicle.

It's a different hand that closes gently around his forearm to guide him the rest of the way to the couch, though, one it takes a second to place. A larger hand, a man's hand, from near the desk right by the couch, and without the faint spearmint of Rigsby's favorite gum, which leaves Cho. Cho ensures he reaches his destination unscathed, something watchful in his grip, though Patrick couldn't explain if he tried the path to that particular adjective.

Rigsby is interesting. He doesn't just touch, he talks, narrating where they are, what they're doing, what's happening around them. The tea thing, the antics with Van Pelt and the boyfriend, there's a reason for all of it but a part of that reason Patrick won't cop to up-front is that he wants to know if it's just pity. He wants to see if Rigsby will drop the whole attempt, walk away and leave him there when Patrick asked for an escort back to his couch - he'd deserve it. That's not what happens.

"Yes," Rigsby says, and Patrick can't help but grin, incredulous. He thanks Rigsby and they stand together.

And Rigsby… narrates. He's irritated, it's obvious he is, maybe a little pissed, but none of it shows in the way he takes Patrick back to the other room. His touch is just as cautious and protective as it was before, fingers of one hand curled around the inside of Patrick's elbow, palm flat against his back, and the voice beside him is steady, pointing out the table to his left. By the time he's back on the couch, Patrick feels bad for how he's acted.

"Thanks for your lovely tea," he says to Rigsby, presumably leaving if the footsteps growing fainter walking away are anything to go off of. Patrick has that same pins and needles feeling, static electricity where Rigsby had gripped him a little tighter when he almost walked into Lisbon's desk.

When he falls, the sound of his heartbeat in his ears surges to an ocean roar, pounding at the inside of his skull. Barely over it, he hears Van Pelt, her voice climbed an octave above itself. Fear. She's afraid. It's in her voice and in her hands, when they seize his shoulders, fingers digging into his jacket. She doesn't call nine-one-one, but she shouts over Patrick's head for someone else to do it, and she doesn't leave. Van Pelt stays put there on the ground next to him.

Her hands move, one pressing over his chest, where his heart sits thundering so hard Patrick is worried it might shatter his ribcage. As if she senses this as well, Van Pelt puts her other hand over his side, palm warm over his heaving flank. It's like she thinks if she holds on hard enough, she can hold him together with just her own hands, and Patrick finds breath just a fraction harder to gasp in.

This isn't just a terminal case of _good samaritanism_. Van Pelt cares for him, fierce and afraid, like it matters that it's him on the ground, not just _a_ person, but _this_ one. Patrick can hear it in her voice, telling him it's gonna be okay, can feel it in her hands and in the way she touches him. And she doesn't leave. He falls, and she shouts for help, and footsteps beat a marching band pattern over the floor, and Van Pelt doesn't leave. Until the moment paramedics arrive, kneel down and edge her out of the way, she doesn't leave.

Patrick thinks about that later, laying on the couch while Lisbon and Cho chase down some wall street schmuck, Rigsby and Van Pelt who knows where doing who knows what. He's trying to get some sleep, eyes for whatever reason closed and hands folded over his stomach. But every time there's a sound, a board creaks under an unidentified shoe, his eyes fly open, searching fruitlessly in featureless dark for the source - friend or foe, help or threat. There on the floor, Van Pelt hadn't left, and her hands held him in one place, anchored to _here_ , to _now_.

He'd thought, for a second, when Lisbon and Cho left, about asking her to stay. To sit near him and talk, do her paperwork or her phone calls or whatever she's doing there, walk him through her part of the investigation. He doesn't care how boring, as long as he'd know she was still there, that he wasn't alone.

It'd be easier if this were permanent, Patrick has decided. Then there would be a point. He would have a purpose, a goal to focus on. Assimilate, acclimate, accommodate. Get used to his new life, figure out how to keep doing his job, rather than this _wait and see_ game. _Wait and see_ , that'd be funny if it weren't so… not.

Sleep doesn't come except in the eddies of a weak tide, tugging his mind around until he doesn't know how long has passed, until the couch under his head is the only proof he's still at CBI, not just drifting somewhere. It smells like old leather and a miasma of laundry detergents, like his own shampoo from a dozen nights pressed to the cushion like it's the only safe place he's ever been.

"Jane," a voice says quietly, getting louder as it moves closer, a voice he identifies as Cho just a split second before the hand lands on his shoulder, patting once then settling to a still weight. The flinch is inevitable and Cho takes it in stride.

"Easy," the agent says. His voice is its same, even-keeled rumble. "It's just us, wanted to let you know we're back from talking to Krager's old boss."

"Thanks," Patrick mumbles back, hoarse from his brief, restless doze.

There's a rustle of fabric as Cho straightens up from where he'd presumably knelt beside the couch. The hand pats his shoulder once more, then briefly touches the side of his head in an odd moment of thoughtless affection that elicits a damnable tightness in Patrick's throat and a different kind of burn behind uselessly closed eyelids.

Lisbon's hand around his wrist in the ambulance. Rigsby pulling him gently away from running into a desk. Van Pelt kneeling on the ground trying to hold him together. Cho touching his head, pointless and kind.

It all surges when the barrel of the gun jabs the small of his back. It's hard and hostile and everything their hands hadn't been, protective and guarding while he's been left without recourse with which to guard himself. Patrick spares a moment to find the contrast poetic, before everything is thrown into chaos again.

Impulse drives him to yank Lisbon's chain the first chance he gets, and impulse drives him to do what he does next, as well. He can't forget it, the way she'd kept him calm and made sure he was safe, right when it first happened. The way she, the others, the way the team had just kept _touching_ him, for real reason of logic, he can't let it go unacknowledged. Unrepaid.

So Patrick stands up, takes a few steps towards her, smile still bright on his face, and holds his own hands out, wide and open.

"Can I?" he asks, and Lisbon looks bemused. She nods, and closes the gap between them, accepting the offered hug. Patrick tries to give some of it back to her, the way she'd made him feel. He tries to give her some kind of understanding of what it had meant to him, how taken care of he'd felt while he was, though he'd never have admitted it, stone cold terrified. Her arms close around his waist, and he gets the impression that she understands. That maybe that's why she'd done it to begin with. That maybe that's why they all had.

The next person that Patrick sees, later that day after several hours asleep on his couch, is Rigsby. The man is not supposed to be at work, is supposed to be out for at least three days, but here he is, sitting down at his desk and squinting at some paper or other. Patrick swings a chair over from Cho's desk, dropping into it and catching Rigsby's attention.

"You can see again," Rigsby observes, looking glad about it, relieved and sincere and putting his pen down to give Patrick his full attention. "How're you feeling? Is that, is it just over now?"

An odder group of people Patrick doesn't think he's ever found. Objectively, Rigsby was more severely hurt than he had been. He was just dealing with a minor concussion, some lingering flash blindness, whereas Rigsby had been pistol-whipped so hard they'd made him get an x-ray to rule out a skull fracture. And here he is, asking _Patrick_ how he's feeling.

"I'm fine," Patrick dismisses, shaking his head. "You, though, I never got a chance to get a look at you after…" He gives a small, vague wave. "All that." He raises his hands then, palms out, a question. "If you'll indulge me for a moment…"

Rigsby snorts and rolls his eyes without any actual annoyance, turning to oblige the request. Patrick steadies him with a hand at the jaw, tilting Rigsby's head to take in the damage. It looks like the x-ray was as overly-cautious as Lisbon had promised it was, a small line of stitches barely visible against Rigsby's hair. Satisfied, Patrick moves him back, looking at the faint bruising on his temple where his head had hit the floor, bracing him with a palm at the side of his neck.

"Well," Patrick tells him gravely, when he's finished cataloguing the damage. "I'm not a medical professional, but I think you're going to live."

With a snort, Rigsby says, "Yeah, that's what they tell me."

"And you can still see?" asks Patrick, still imitation-serious, and that gets a genuine laugh.

"Yeah, man, I can see."

"Then you're gonna be fine. Now." He turns, letting Rigsby go and picking the form up off the desk. "They're really making you do an incident report? _Now?_ "

Van Pelt he finds on purpose. She's sitting on a bench in the hall, going over what looks to be her own incident report, when Patrick ambles over to sit beside her. Barely looking up, she greets him with a quiet 'hey, Jane', then looks back down at the piece of neatly printed paper. Patrick has spent long enough steeped to his gills in guilt to recognize the feel of it on someone else, and he leans to the side, jostling her gently with his elbow.

"You shouldn't be evaluating everyone you go out with like they're suspects," Patrick says, voice quiet to preserve the privacy of the conversation amidst the lives going on like normal around them. "It's a good thing you didn't spend every moment investigating him, and there's no other way you could've known what would happen. It means you can still be happy."

"I brought him here," she mutters, refusing to look Patrick in the eye. She's still staring at the paper, the printed Helvetica _Dan_ explaining how she'd known the man that walked into their lives and almost taken them away. "I walked him right in here, I introduced him to you, to- to _Rigsby_ , and then…"

Patrick reaches over, taking one of her hands away from the paper, then turns it over in her lap so the words on it are obscured. He settles both of his hands around Van Pelt's and holds it tightly along with her attention.

"And then _he_ made choices that nobody forced him into and nobody could've talked him out of. It wasn't your fault." Adages about pots and kettles swarm Patrick's mind, and he dismisses them, focuses on her. "It wasn't your fault, Grace."

She leans to the side a bit, bumping her head into his upper arm. "Thanks. For saying that."

"I didn't just say it," Patrick pushes. "I meant it. It's true."

"Well, y'know." Van Pelt nudges him again. "Just. Thanks."

Sometimes, it really is as easy as just 'thanks'.

Just as he's about to leave that night, Patrick catches sight of the only member of the team he hasn't spoken to yet since regaining his ability to see. Cho is sitting at his desk, looking intently at his computer with a kind of laser-guided, serious focus that can only mean he's fifteen minutes into a game of solitaire set to the extreme difficulty level. Patrick can't see the screen but he's spent enough time sprawled on that couch while Cho shuffled digital cards around to know what it looks like. Patrick walks over, and grins when he sees the screen.

"Red eight on the black seven two from the left," he says, and Cho makes absolutely no move to disguise what he's doing, flashing a thumbs up and moving the card with a click. It's… normal. The afternoon, the office, it all feels so normal. Patrick's eyes skim over the room, over his couch, and he remembers laying there trying to sleep, remembers Cho's hand on his shoulder letting him know they're back.

"Hey," Patrick says suddenly, walking over and perching on the edge of the desk. Cho stops what he's doing and turns a bit, frowning at him.

"What, is everything okay?" The response is instantly worried, a reminder that things haven't been normal, that everyone's going to be a little twitchy for a while.

"Yeah, everything's fine." In a reversed reflection of the day before, Patrick reaches out and lays a hand on Cho's shoulder, squeezing once then letting go. "Just wanted to say thanks."

"Thanks?" Cho asks, completely bewildered. The frown's twisted into something else, half confused, half amused. Standing, Patrick starts to walk away, headed to leave. Cho's voice sounds after him, a little louder. "Thanks for what?"

"You know, just…" Patrick smiles, turning back at the door, even as Cho quirks a confused-amused eyebrow at him. "Just, thanks."


End file.
